The whole "No 20/10 big men this year" thing is just a mixture of odd circumstances. There are several players in the league who are 20/10 caliber big men. Howard is usually putting up 23 and 12 or so, but between his injuries and that whole fiasco in LA his numbers are down this year. Kevin Love has been injured all year, otherwise he'd be up there. David Lee has shown an ability to go for 20/10, and he's pretty damn close this year scoring 19 ppg. If Blake Griffin were playing as many minutes as he did his first two seasons he's be in that range again. If Chris Bosh were on a team where he wasn't the 3rd option there's a good chance he'd be in that range again.

You also have to take into account that teams just scored more in that era, especially in that season. In the 94-95 season 16 of the 27 teams were averaging over 100 points per game (including three teams over 110) compared to only 10 teams averaging 100 points so far this year, with the highest being Houston at 106.1.

Teams were playing at a pretty ridiculous pace that season as well. People like to talk about how the 04-05 Suns under D'Antoni played at a really fast pace, but there were two teams playing at an even faster pace then them in 94-95. This was basically the season in which the league went from playing at a crazy fast pace to the more slow it down style of the mid-late 90s. If you go back just a couple seasons before this, those Suns teams would have been one of the slower paced teams in the league.

Not true. Jordan got hand checked plenty. John Starks made a career out of hand checking Jordan.

It was a different era. He got calls obviously, but Jordan faced teams that were 100x more physical than today's era of basketball. It's not even close.

Go watch some clips on the no easy buckets era of the Knicks and Pacers. Jordan went through that. Lebron would cry if he had to go through that. Like he did vs the Wizards which wasn't even close to what the Knicks and Pacers used to do in the 90s.

All-time is tough because you can make an argument for so many guys. I think I'd go with

PG: Magic
SG: Jordan
SF: Bird
PF: KG
C: Shaq

BN: Duncan
BN: LeBron
BN: Oscar Robinson

Obviously you can debate a lot of guys over these, but I picked them based on how I felt they could play together. I mainly went with KG starting because I felt he would be a perfect compliment to Shaq due to his athleticism, versatility, defense, and ability to stretch the floor (clearing the paint for Shaq to dominate).

On the bench I went for versatility with Duncan being able to play 4/5 and Lebron/Oscar being able to play anywhere else basically. I also thought about putting Reggie Miller on the bench purely for clutch shooting.

Not true. Jordan got hand checked plenty. John Starks made a career out of hand checking Jordan.

It was a different era. He got calls obviously, but Jordan faced teams that were 100x more physical than today's era of basketball. It's not even close.

Go watch some clips on the no easy buckets era of the Knicks and Pacers. Jordan went through that. Lebron would cry if he had to go through that. Like he did vs the Wizards which wasn't even close to what the Knicks and Pacers used to do in the 90s.

ugh you're gotta be that guy huh?

so can we devalue everything jordan did as a defender? he used his big hands to steer guys all the time and utilized handchecking as much as anyone. are we to say that if he played into today's nba people would be blowing by him or he'd be constantly racking up fouls because he wouldn't have the luxury of handchecking?

......or is it possible that when we're talking about players from different eras, great players would find a way to adapt?

so can we devalue everything jordan did as a defender? he used his big hands to steer guys all the time and utilized handchecking as much as anyone. are we to say that if he played into today's nba people would be blowing by him or he'd be constantly racking up fouls because he wouldn't have the luxury of handchecking?

......or is it possible that when we're talking about players from different eras, great players would find a way to adapt?

Of course they would adapt, but you're missing my point: Jordan played in an era that made it more difficult to score. So offensive numbers are inflated today bc of it.

The game was a lot more physical then. That's not even debatable. The game is much more friendly for guards now than it was then. Thats why that era was dominated by big men.

Which again, makes what Jordan did that much more impressive. Today's game was geared towards guard play, that wasn't the case when he played.